ramakur:
"Really I appreciate your patriotic spirit."
Sir, there is no need to do so. What is much more important is a way to start working with that spirit in mind.
Nothing is going to happen unless the government promotes research and innovation at the university level. A lot of defense research in the U.S. is done by univ. profs and students(albeit mainly grad and Ph.D. people).

docel:
The DRDO, in my opinion, are a bunch of corrupt and incompetent fools.
They're the ones who've been trying to build the Arjun, by the way...

"they don't think new"
Exactly my point. They don't innovate. All they do is reinvent the wheel, or worse still, pinch their ideas from elsewhere.

"Defence sector does not advertise its armament"
Have you ever considered the possibility that they have very little to advertise?

Lastly, I'm very sorry if all I've said has seemed overly pessimistic to anyone.
It's just that the defence sector in India, especially the tech. aspect, has always been a subject I really feel about.

"Defence sector does not advertise its armament"
Have you ever considered the possibility that they have very little to advertise?

Have you also ever considered that they probably aren't allowed to advertise? Have you also considered that they have developed a pretty decent missile system that is already in place? And also nuclear weapons. They also have a darn good space programme running.

Actually, the mess in the public/government sector is not because of poor quality manpower... Its actually the political setup that is to blame. We have an awful political leadership that is too egoistic, mostly uneducated, corrupt and short-sighted to be unable to think beyond what will get them voted into power in the next elections... country be damned. Priyanka Gandhi's hubby is not frisked at airports, but the three defence chiefs should be??? Bofors guns did very well in Kargil war, but they will not buy these guns the next time because of the mess surrounding the purchase the first time around???

"Have you also ever considered that they probably aren't allowed to advertise?"
But why? Every damned country in the world tries to sell the best armaments they make. But we don't. Because we can't.
Because we haven't much to sell .
Except for the brahmos, which is built with Russian collaboration. And yes, they are launching satellites for other organizations. That's one major thing I'd overlooked.

What you said about the politicians is perfectly true.
And to make matters worse, in India, science and tech., especially for the defence sector does not figure on the list of things that can get a party voted into power.
Technically speaking, everyone, from the PM down ought to be frisked at the airports.

By the way, does anyone know if any of the big companies(Tata, Mahindra, etc.) are starting something in robotics?
It's high time they did...

"But this is fast getting into a meaningless discussion."
I don't know. It certainly isn't related to robotics, but calling it meaningless?

"meaningless" because the thread doesn't do justice to its topic.
guess this can be shifted to the "chit-chat" forum...

Here is my piece of 'chit-chat' -(cant wait until it is shifted :wink: )

ISRO is getting better - I mean, really better - even after the cream of Indians have migrated to greener patches outside the country, we are still in competition !! We are atleast in the first 10! considering there are more than 150 countries in the world!

And we still say we don't have anything to advertise!!
Why do we have to advertise, anyway??